_kar--these stand out each as an
eloquent testimony to the indomitable character of the faith Baha'u'llah
has kindled in their hearts.

Who, contemplating so splendid a record of service, can doubt that these
faithful stewards of the redeeming grace of God have preserved, undivided
and unimpaired, the priceless heritage entrusted to their charge? Have
they not, one might well reflect, in ways which only future historians
will indicate, approached the high standard that characterized those deeds
of imperishable renown accomplished by those that have gone before them?

Not by the material resources which the members of this infant community
can now summon to their aid; not by the numerical strength of its
present-day supporters; nor by any direct tangible benefits its votaries
can as yet confer upon the multitude of the needy and the disconsolate
among their countrymen, should its potentialities be tested or its worth
determined. Nowhere but in the purity of its precepts, the sublimity of
its standards, the integrity of its laws, the reasonableness of its
claims, the comprehensiveness of its scope, the universality of its
program, the flexibility of its institutions, the lives of its founders,
the heroism of its martyrs, and the transforming power of its influence,
should the unprejudiced observer seek to obtain the true criterion that
can enable him to fathom its mysteries or to estimate its virtue.

Decline of Mortal Dominion

How unfair, how irrelevant, to venture any comparison between the slow and
gradual consolidation of the Faith proclaimed by Baha'u'llah and those
man-created movements which, having their origin in human desires and with
their hopes centered on mortal dominion, must inevitably decline and
perish! Springing from a finite mind, begotten of human fancy, and
oftentimes the product of ill-conceived designs, such movements succeed,
by reason of their novelty, their appeal to man's baser instincts and
their dependence upon the resources of a sordid world, in dazzling for a
time the eyes of men, only to plunge finally from the heights of their
meteoric career into the darkness of oblivion, dissolved by the very
forces that had assisted in their creation.

Not so with the Revelation of Baha'u'llah. Born in an environment of
appalling degradation, springing from a soil steeped in age-long
corruptions, hatreds and prejudice, inculcating principles irreconcilable
with the accepted standards of the